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At PHD we like to stay ahead of the game. That’s why we’re always thinking, collaborating and sharing knowledge about the future of the industry.

We’ve written a few books...

Predestination
Where we are all heading

What plans would you put in place if you had the foresight to know where your business, industry, or life is heading?

At PHD, we believe that looking to the future can help us think differently about today. We need to escape the tendency to interpret new technology with the tools that already exist.

This is also a sentiment shared by Kevin Kelly (pictured), co-founder and Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, whose latest book ‘The Inevitable’ explores the 12 tech trends that will shape our future. Our recent partnership with Kevin at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity saw us explore the huge opportunities these trends offer – from virtual reality in the home and an on-demand economy, to screens everywhere and artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture.

By understanding and embracing them, we have the opportunity to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that will bring maximum benefits.

Kevin talks about how these technological, cultural, and societal changes will completely revolutionise the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. The world of media and marketing is predestined to be a driving force in harnessing these tech trends and the opportunities they provide for creativity and innovation.

So, to make it easier to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and help you explore the opportunities that they will provide, we’re sharing the media implications of 8 of these trends, compiled by PHD’s very best minds.

And as Kevin Kelly says, “We’re at the beginning of the beginning” and “you are not too late”.

Collaborating with leaders in their field and bringing new thinking to the industry

The Coming AI Revolution

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and getting smarter all the time and with the predicted rise of the sentient VPA making purchasing decisions for us, brands will have to adapt to marketing to algorithms instead of consumers.

Our exploration of AI saw us collaborate with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, who shared his views on an AI-enabled future when he joined PHD at Cannes Lions.

In “Sentience: The Coming AI Revolution and the Implications for Marketing”, we address the incredible potential for marketers and what they can do now to prepare.

Sentience

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Mind Trip

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Propelling marketers into the future to help address the problems of today

At PHD, we believe that looking into the future can jolt us into thinking differently about today. Together with futurist and techno-philosopher Jason Silva – host of National Geographic channel’s Brain Games – we invited marketers to come on a Mind Trip and gaze a few decades into the future, to 40 or 50 years away, where things such as nanotech and biotech will be commonplace.

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7 billion hours by 1 billion gamers are what’s up for grabs in the Engagement Economy, according to game designer and author Jane McGonigal when she joined PHD at the Cannes Lions festival.

Game Change discusses how ‘gamification’ can be harnessed and applied as a business model for the future.

We liked the idea so much we built a game layer into PHD’s global collaboration platform, SOURCE, allowing employees to gamefully tackle daily challenges, which has led to significant improvements in engagement and output.

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Game Change

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Overthrow

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10 ways to tell a challenger story

There is more to being a challenger brand than David vs Goliath. Telling the story of ‘Small vs Big’ is indeed one kind of potentially successful challenger narrative, but only one – and not the most frequent, despite its brand mythology. Overthrow is an exploration by eatbigfish and PHD of the 10 most common successful challenger narratives; what they share, how they differ, and how they should structure their media behaviours in today’s highly connected world.